The others on the hill, approximately twenty or so, appeared to be curiosity seekers from Okehampton and nearby villages. Families with children, individuals—no one appeared bothered yet by the developing rain as they eagerly searched for a telly star’s signs of death. As I waited for the headache remedy to take effect, I noticed a boy of eleven or twelve, blondish and chunky, squatting down and examining the grass at his feet almost one blade at a time. Such concentration would have been the envy of any Scenes of Crime officer. “What are you looking for, lad?” I asked.
“Feathers, sir,” he answered, not looking up. “White ones.”
I was about to point out that Shad hadn’t been a white duck when a little girl with dark hair, big eyes, wearing a blue rain jacket and little blue wellies, saw Nadine and called out to her parent, “Oh, Mummy, may I play with kitty?”
“Ask the gentleman, Pearl,” said a large woman in her forties, quite disturbingly dressed the same as her offspring.
Pearl approached me. “Sir, may I play with your kitty?”
“Ask her,” I answered.
The girl frowned as she turned toward Nadine. Val, however, intercepted the girl’s inquiry and said to her, “Perhaps later, dear.”
Pearl ran off to her mother’s side declaiming frightening things said to her by those horrible bio cats, Pearl’s mum glared at me, and mercifully it began raining in earnest. Several souvenir hunters made for their vehicles. “Into each life some rain must fall,” observed Walter.
I glanced at him. “Shakespeare?”
“No sir. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”
“Let’s see if we can find Shad.”
After half an hour of steadily increasing rain, an unpleasantly chilly wind from the west encouraging the appreciation of warmer climes and more sheltered endeavors, all of the other seekers had departed. It was curious watching as the rain seemed to heal the place where the explosion occurred. The stone dust washed from the blasted granite bedrock, clumps of earth eroded, a muddy pool began forming in the bottom of the small crater.
“I wonder how long it will take, sir, before all signs of what happened here are swallowed,” said Walter, still holding the umbrella between me and the rain. My coat had water repellant pretensions that were also eroding as the rain continued.
“Months,” I guessed. “Perhaps only days.” I looked over the hilly expanses of the former artillery range. Heather, peat bogs, rocks, the view of the edges softened by the great solvent, rain. The only evidence that anything had ever exploded out here was at our feet and fading as we watched. “Existence is such a transitory thing, Walter, our marks of passing so slight. In the midst of living, though, life seems so enduring, our accomplishments gigantic and eternal. Yet when death touches us, this sense of permanence evaporates like the illusion it is. Perhaps that’s why so many of us hang onto life so.”
“Lingering in hopes of permanence, sir?”
“The return of its illusion, perhaps. Do you keep a backup copy of your engrams, Walter?”
“Indeed I do, sir. Rent-A-Mech insists on it. Perish the thought something should happen to me. Should it, however, my training, experience, and, most importantly, client preferences and requirements won’t be lost. Neither will I. A new can, and at most I’d lose a day or two. It affords me a measure of security and protects the firm’s client information.” He faced me. “Weren’t D. S. Shad’s engrams backed up?”
“No.”
“Dear me, sir. Why is that, if I might know?”
“A half dozen excuses—it takes time, too bothersome, uses too much memory in the mainframe, and so on. Most bios don’t do it, though, because it feels creepy.”
“Creepy, sir?”
“That’s Shad’s word. An uneasiness. I think, because we’re originally human naturals, we hold onto this illusion that we’re unique irreproducible beings. Backing up engram imprints gives in to the fact, all this protoplasm notwithstanding, we are but machines. It’s humbling.”
“Are your engrams backed up, sir?”
“No. And, yes, the reasons for not doing it seem sillier with each passing moment.” I nodded toward the crater. “We’d best finish our search before the entire moor erodes into the sea. Walter, we could cover more ground if you’d agree to join in.”
“I would be happy to, sir,” he responded lowering his voice, “However, Mrs. Jaggers told me she’d have my gears for garters if I allowed a single drop of rain to fall upon you.”
“Since I’m already soaked through, dear boy, I’d say you’re already doomed.”
“Before my imminent disassembly, sir, shall I engage in a bit of exploration then?”
“The wages are the same in either case.” I pointed to the opposite side of the crater. “Go down slope until you run out of loose clumps of soil and other debris from the explosion. Go a couple meters beyond, then circle the edge of the debris field, moving toward the center with each circuit. I’ll start in the center and work my way out. Look in, around, over, and beneath everything. And thank you.”
We walked the coil for more than two hours, turning over rocks and clods of earth, not finding Shad or anything into which he might have copied himself. I reached the displaced hanging stone before Walter. When I examined the scene analyzer I could tell someone had tried prying the thing free of the rock, which showed crude tool marks. I suspected souvenir hunters. Our culprit would possess the tool necessary to remove the instrument from its site.
My wireless interface detected no signal at all from the prang. I stood and looked toward the northwest. The view took in vast distances, the boulder-pocked flanks of Yes Tor filling the far distance. But what I could see was but a small part of the moor. If Shad had copied into a mech and had gone for help he could be quite a ways from Hangingstone Hill. He could have run out of power before reaching help. He could have been caught in the open.
Suddenly I felt a chill and began shaking as I pulled my coat about me. I was soaked, my ankle hurt, and my head was splitting. I was very tired and possessed of an overwhelming desire to lie down in the wet heather, pull the rain up over my head, and let sleep take me.
“Sir, if I may?” said Walter.
I smelled hot tea. When I opened my eyes and looked, Walter was holding out a steaming cuppa. I took it in both hands, felt it warm my palms, then took a sip, the healing liquid heating my core.
“Thank you. Where on earth did you get this?”
“I had a few moments before your party made it to the car, sir, and packed a snack. I arranged a bit of shelter on the east side of that stone building at the top of the hill.”
He helped me along, and by the time I had finished the tea, I was mobile again, my wits about me, but a terrible pain in my ankle. The wall on the east side of the observation shack was in severe disrepair, but Walter had taken a few rocks and boards and constructed a makeshift shelter off to the side of the shack, within which was a plank bench propped upon two flat stones. He helped me down upon the thing easing the pain in my ankle considerably. Before I could thank him, he held out a tray of small sandwiches with one hand and his carafe of tea in the other. I had three of the former and a refill from the latter as he warmed the enclosure with his wrinkle remover.